Filed under: Uncategorized
These things happened:
In April I was asked to contribute a short fiction piece to Everyday Genius. It is about scorpions (the arachnids, not the band).
In June I reviewed Eugene Marten’s terrifying third novel Firework (Tyrant Books) for Time Out New York. I said this:
“Like the janitor in the cult classic Waste and the locksmith from In the Blind, Jelonnek, the state-employee antihero of Firework, is a shiftless man whose routine is shaken by a series of twisted circumstances and terrible decisions. Marten masters a world of blue-collar minutiae with spare, striking prose and meticulous detail, but Firework is, at 370 pages, a breakout achievement that also tackles issues of gender, class, race, identity and family.”
In July I wrote two reviews: Shya Scanlon’s In this alone impulse for The Collagist and Dawn Raffel’s Further Adventures in the Restless Universe for 360 Main Street.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is a beautiful, terribly sad novel I reviewed at TONY. You should read it now, when the weather is beautiful and springy and you will be less likely to dip into depression.
“Finland is a place where “quiet and routine settle even more firmly with the snow,” and the book’s subtle, slow accrual of moodiness and dark humor feeds the smoldering ambiance. Maile Chapman’s precise, controlled language captures the crushing monotony of hospital life (the dispensing of medications, the saturated dressings that must be changed at intervals, the log where every action is to be recorded), and these repetitions contribute to a sense of constricting, institutionalized doom. Not since the Overlook Hotel has a place so enormous felt so claustrophobic.”
Filed under: Uncategorized
I reviewed Sam Lipsyte’s highly anticipated third novel The Ask over at at Time Out New York.
“Lipsyte’s attack is two-pronged: Sentences here are syntactic marvels, clearly labored over, yet the delivery is effortless. Milo’s riffs, even those only loosely tethered to the plot, are well worth the ride…Lipsyte’s brand of absurdity is deeply rooted in the now. The recession, text messaging, reality TV—all are up for grabs. What’s particularly effective is his acerbic yet subtle approach. Milo scoffs at love (revisiting, hilariously, a disastrous orgy in Greenpoint), at modern parenthood, at his taste in Internet porn (Milo’s favorite site is Spreadsheet Spreaders, where men pleasure their female employers for “raises up to 20%”). But he’s never simply bitter; one can always sense a yearning in this book, even at its most acidic moments.”
I wanted to work in this great line about Milo masturbating seed likely containing a “sullen autist” into a tube sock, but these TONY reviews are pretty short…
Filed under: Reviews
Robert Lopez’s Kamby Bolongo Mean River is the best novel I’ve read in a long time. Here’s what I said about it at 360 Main Street:
“Lopez…exhibits complete authority here.The writing is clean and unadorned, reduced to the most effective strategy—”It’s when people use words they shouldn’t is when we get in trouble with ourselves.” Lopez’s choice of setting and subject—an empty room, a man confined—creates a void where language rushes in. Through expert use of literal and linguistic sparseness, Lopez creates in Kamby Bolongo Mean River a world entire from next to nothing.”
I have a new review at TONY: the adorable and charming Kevin Killian. I had heard of him only in relation to Dennis Cooper and the New Narrative bunch before but I am so happy I was assigned his latest collection. He lands solidly in the zone where experimentation and entertainment collide.
“Killian’s specific talent is his ability to create affable protagonists and to make the reader feel welcome, even as his stories boldly confront explicit sexual scenarios. In his latest collection, Impossible Princess, the author continues to approach the audience with an inclusive charm. His narrators directly address the readers, and patiently guide them through a series of fantastically unexpected situations that blur boundaries between fact and fiction, porn and erotica, gay and straight. “In writing, does one set down one’s personal experience and hope that it strikes a universal chord in everyone?” asks a character named (as many here are) Kevin Killian, a writer hopelessly in love and, by way of his quick wit, utterly lovable.”
While researching KK, I came across this brilliant personal essay by Dodie Bellamy, author of Pink Steam.
Filed under: Publications
I reviewed Matt Bell’s awesome novella The Collectors for 360 Main Street.
“Fearless in the face of history, Bell inserts an interloper into the story, the collector. ‘I came in through the inventory of your home,’ the collector says, ‘through the listing of objects written down as if they meant something.’ And soon Bell has made these lists mean something, has painstakingly constructed lives out of junk, has coaxed new feelings for a story we have heard over and again. We know what is going to happen, but it is how that is important. Meticulously crafted, The Collectors is shocking in its orderliness, its clean sentences and careful arrangement. Like the compulsion that drives Homer and Langley to hoard, not one word is wasted here.”
Read the book online here.
Filed under: Events
I am reading at Earshot next Friday. Won’t you come?
Full info re-posted below:
*****
Another EARSHOT is coming atcha on Friday, November 6th at 7:30pm, packed with some amazing talent from out of town! Won’t you join us at Rose Live Music in Williamsburg, Bklyn, for all of the fun and festivities?
This time around, our featured readers are poet and translator JOHANNES GORANSSON (author of “Dear Ra* and *Pilot*) and poet and Black Ocean founder JANAKA STUCKY (author of *Your Name Is the Only Freedom*)! They’ll be joined by three MFA wizards: Kimberly King Parsons (Columbia University), Kit Kalnay (New York University) and Helen Rubenstein (Brooklyn College).
The admission fee is a measly five dollars, which includes a free drink! Join us!
EARSHOT!
Friday, November 6th @ 7:30 PM
@ Rose Live Music
Hosted by Nicole Steinberg
$5 + one free drink
Featuring:
Johannes Goransson (*Dear Ra*, *Pilot*)
Janaka Stucky (*Your Name Is the Only Freedom*)
Kimberly King Parsons (Columbia University)
Kit Kalnay (New York University)
Helen Rubenstein (Brooklyn College)
Rose Live Music is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://roselivemusic.com.
EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area. Visit http://www.earshotnyc.com for more information or e-mail Nicole Steinberg at earshotnyc@gmail.com.
Follow the EARSHOT twitter feed at http://twitter.com/earshotnyc
I reviewed Mary Caponegro’s latest short story collection, All Fall Down for TONY.
“Many of the stories here focus on the moment before the fall: A husband and wife attend a couples’ retreat in a halfhearted attempt to save their doomed marriage; a man nurses his dying mother while ignoring his very pregnant wife; an interracial lesbian couple struggles to stay together when one of them is diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. These scenarios, unlike those in most of Caponegro’s prior work, are very much of this world.”
These stories are definitely in a more conventional mode, but even vintage Caponegro fans will be satisfied.
I reviewed Lydia Davis’s collected works for TONY a few weeks ago. It was tough in the space allotted to even begin to touch on the achievements she’s had in the last 30 years.
“This collection does not demonstrate a progression so much as an accretion, as Davis has exhibited a masterful style since the beginning of her career. Instead, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis simply serves as testament to a writer who continually pushes the bounds of short fiction, and who brilliantly defies categorization. Davis is known for her ability to pack big themes into a tight space; many stories here are less than a page, and some consist of only one sentence.”
You know who could have written a better review of Lydia Davis in 280 words? Lydia Davis.
I said nice things about Scorch Atlas, Blake Butler’s new novel in stories, over at Time Out New York and then Blake said nice things back on his blog.
“The 14 linked stories in Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas depict the fragility of the American family through relentless accumulation of apocalyptic detail. Parents disappear or are held captive by their children. Babies are born malformed and enormous. Homes are destroyed by water or fire or accreting dust.”
Look out for lots of new reviews coming up, rapid-fire style.
